At most greenhouses today transplanting is done by hand. As a consequence, plants need to be grown fairly large to accommodate manual transplanting and young plants with fine roots tend to loose the root medium around the roots when manually handled and this is also a very time consuming and labor intensive activity. In those situations where there have been attempts to use a machine to transplant young plants, such as seedlings, into a tray for display and sale, the existing equipment does not pick up all the plants but leaves some in the seedling tray, it cannot replace the missing plants and consequently plants the finished container without some plants. Moreover, it does not firm the plant into the receiving container. Sometimes a seedling plug is dropped while enroute to the larger receiving container and the present equipment is limited as to types of containers into which the plants may be introduced. Additional labor is needed to inspect and place plants into the cells that have been missed. The equipment available today goes out of adjustment easily and is costly to repair.
The present invention overcomes these disadvantages by being able to transplant plants at a younger age because the root ball acts as a carrier. The root ball will not disintegrate with mechanical manipulation because it is in an open cell structure capable of withstanding movement. The entire operation is computer controlled so that efficiencies of time are realized.